Will Quantum-Encryption Create Near-Anonymity for the Web?

There’s good news coming from a team comprised of members from Duke, Ohio State, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The team is working on high-speed quantum-encryption. This type of encryption utilized quantum computing, that rising technology that could offer a challenge to the security of blockchains such as bitcoin is based on.

It turns out the same technology that can be used to decrypt can also be used to encrypt. From Tech Times

According to the researchers’ study published this week in Science Advances, the new system can create and distribute encryption codes at a rate of megabits per second, which means it transmits quantum key distribution five to ten times faster than existing methods.

The team, composed of researchers…..demonstrates that the technique is immune from common attacks even in a situation where the equipment itself has exhibited a flaw that could open up leaks. “We really need to be thinking hard now of different techniques that we could use for trying to secure the internet,” said Daniel Gauthier, a physics professor at the Ohio State University.

“We are now likely to have a functioning quantum computer that might be able to start breaking the existing cryptographic codes in the near future,” said Daniel Gauthier, a professor of physics at The Ohio State University. “We really need to be thinking hard now of different techniques that we could use for trying to secure the internet.”

…..Most current QKD systems transmit data “between tens to hundreds of kilobytes per second,” a rate not sufficient for most uses, including chat and telephony. The researchers can inject more information into each photon transmitted by adjusting the release time and the phase, thereby encoding two bits instead of just one. This means they can transmit keys quickly and securely and, more importantly, over fast fiber optic cables.

If the quantum-powered encryption works as good as advertised, it could move people one step closer to that dreaded of all dreaded realities for coercive associations, near-anonymity. We wrote about why that is such a fundamental threat to their continued existence here.

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